When I was 16 years old I got a job at the C&O Railroad Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia. You may have heard of Huntington...Jamie Oliver had a reality show about it on TV last season because it was named by the CDC in Atlanta as the most unhealthy city in the US. The railroad hospital is long gone, but I'm guessing it could have won that same unflattering award for hospitals in the US.
When I started at the hospital I got a job as a janitor. It was a good job, and paid very well - $1.72 an hour which was a whole bunch better than I had been making at MacDonald's. MacDonald's had paid me the current minimum wage, but it was only $0.90 an hour for the food service industry...because they figured people would make extra money on tips. At MacDonald's? But I digress...that's another story for another time.
The hospital was four stories high, with a north and south wing. I don't know how many beds they had, but it was a good sized place, and there were about 15 of us in the custodial crew. I was working the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and was pretty much a runt. I had just passed the 5' 1" mark, and weighed in at around 100 pounds. Our high school was almost completely white, and there was not a single African-American there. So, when I found out I was the only white person on the custodial staff, it was very interesting. They were nice to me for the most part, and started calling me "Slim"...which I didn't mind. They didn't have any uniforms my size, so all my clothes just hung off me. Good thing that the shirts just hung over the pants they gave us, because I had to pull my pants up the my armpits to keep the bottoms from dragging the ground. The TV show Erkle hadn't come out yet, but I knew a fashion disaster in the making when I saw one.
They had a nice system for assigning work at the hospital. We would rotate to different floors each week, and we also had a list of maintenance and cleaning tasks we did at various times. There was enough work and variety to keep me busy, but not so busy that I couldn't stop to chat with the staff, and especially the patients. I met a lot of great people, and made so many friends. The really hard part was when they died sometimes...but I knew how wonderful it was going to be for them when they moved on. So, I was sad to not get to see them again, but full of joy for them for the next part of their journey.
I had a lot of things happen at the hospital - way too many for one blog. So, I'll just start somewhere and come back to this place several times in the future.
One of the period cleaning jobs was to sweep, mop and wax the stairwells at the north and south end of the hospital. We didn't have to do it often, so when it came my turn to do it - it was my first time. As you can imagine, it's not a very challenging assignment. Sweep everything clean, wet mop the floors and stairs, and then wax the floors on the landings (but not the stairs). So, as I did the north stairwell, I kind of settled into the zen janitor space where your body just does it's thing, and your mind goes where ever it wants to go. Before I knew it, I was done there, and so bundled up all my equipment and headed for the south stairwell.
I started on the top floor because you know the old saying "dirt rolls downhill"? Well, that's not exactly the saying but close enough. So, I swept the fourth floor and then swept my way down the stairs to the third floor. As I was standing on the third floor, I looked to the side and could see what some janitors unflattering called "crow row". On the other side of the glass doors and glass walls, there was a row of wheelchairs, all in a side by side line. Looked like vehicles in a parking lot. In each chair was a very old, feeble man. Each had a belt strapped around them to be sure they didn't fall out. All of them were in some state of stupor, and no wonder. They pretty much spent all day in that row, except for meal and bathroom time. The idea was to get them out of their rooms, and give them the opportunity to talk. But most of them were too far gone to talk, so mostly they sat quietly, heads and eyes drooping.
I'd seen them many times before, and even tried to engage some of the more lively ones in conversation. Some actually could talk, and loved to tell stories of steam engines and their adventures on the rails. Some of the stories were a bit beyond belief, but they were all entertaining. Mostly I just enjoyed seeing the light come back into their tired eyes as they relived a part of their lives that was far away now.
Anyway, I trudged back up the stairs to get my mop and fresh bucket of hot water and cleaner. I started on the part of the landing away from the stairs, and began swiping the mop back and forth in a familiar rythym as I walked backwards. The stairs were the usual in commercial buildings. There was one long flight all the way down to the third floor landing, and the steps had rugged steel edges to prevent wear and damage.
As I mopped, I went back in to the zen zone...not really thinking anymore about what I was doing. All of the sudden my silent meditation was disturbed when I took a step back with my right foot and landed on....nothing. In a sudden panic, I realized that I'd walked backwards off the landing and was surely going to fall down those steel edged stairs. I figured that I'd probably be seriously injured, and wouldn't stop bouncing until I got all the way to the bottom.
Everything went into very slow motion at that point. I considered my options - falling backwards, or trying something else. It occurred to me that if I jumped backwards as hard as I could off my still-grounded left foot, that maybe just maybe, I could clear all the stairs in a single bound and come down on the landing on the fourth floor. There were two major issues with this plan though. First, it was a good 12 foot drop to the landing below, and second the ceiling was sloped down following the descending stairs. I couldn't remember just how high that ceiling was, and knew that there was a very good chance that I would ram my head into the ceiling and then fall the rest of the way down the stairs. Hmmmn....
After what must have been only milliseconds of thinking, I decided to chance the jump rather than just letting myself fall. So, I jumped as hard and low as possible backwards off the landing and began my descent towards either doom or salvation. I remained in the same super slow motion mode, watching the wall and railing fly by, and feel the top of my head ever so lightly brush the ceiling as I gathered speed. I set my legs in position to land, and suddenly I was down to the landing. I hit pretty hard, and staggered back just a bit, but I was safe and totally amazed that it had worked.
Well....almost worked. I had a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something important. Still in slow motion mode, I looked back up the stairs and what I saw was not good. In my right hand, at the end of my full outstretched right arm, was my trusty mop. Only it wasn't looking so trusty any more. It was flying down and coming at me like a spear. I tried to deflect it, but it had way too much speed and inertia. I only managed to change it's direction slightly...and my arm folded against the force of it as the end went straight into my gaping mouth.
Sometimes when we get hurt under stress we don't feel it, but that wasn't the case this time. It REALLY hurt as the mop handle smashed my lips against my teeth, and then continued on into the inside of my mouth. It hit the roof of my mouth, and knocked my head dramatically backwards. It stopped finally and I yanked it out of my mouth and the blood started to pour onto my hospital blue shirt.
It was at this point that I looked to the side to see if anyone had been watching. I'd completely forgotten about the crow row, and as I looked at them, they were to a man all wide eyed and staring at me with expressions of disbelief on their faces. I suppose it was an appropriate expression, because you don't often get to see someone flying backwards down the stairs and then catch a mop in their mouth. Anyway their heads had snapped up, and their mouths dropped open. They looked at me and then each other, and then back at me again. Many of them began to smile, like they'd just seen a great circus trick that they'd love to see again.
I dropped the mop, and headed towards the doors to the landing. I didn't want to tell anyone what I'd done (this wasn't my first injury there and I was on their "watch" list already), so I figured I'd go to the washroom and see if I could get the bleeding stopped and get a clean jersey. As I got to the glass door, who should appear but my family doctor, doing his monthly day of doing rounds there. His shocked look was revealing, and he said "What in the hell happened to you son?". I just mumbled that I'd had a mopping accident..and I quickly moved past him to the hall and bathroom.
I was so embarassed at it all, and hurt too. While I was washing the blood out of my mouth and off my face, I thought again about what had just happened. How had I forgotten that stupid mop? I finally realized that holding onto the mop was a critical part of why I'd been able to make the whole escape work. It had stabilized me during the jump, like feathers on an arrow, and without it in my hand I'd most likely tumbled in the air, and then come down even harder than if I'd just let myself fall. My mop was completely trusty again.
I stepped out of the bathroom to get back to work, and saw that the men in crow row were all still wide awake and watching me keenly to see if I had any other tricks up my sleeve. As I got up to them, I stopped and gave them a grand bow, and they laughed. I smiled too, but it hurt. I grabbed my mop off the floor, told it "thank you" for saving my life, and went in search of a clean shirt before I got into trouble again with the staff.
Lessons learned: Pay attention to the moment. Sometimes even the best plan is made to succeed by small mistakes. It can be good to bring joy and happiness to other's lives, but choose your method carefully.
